The Secret World - Ground Zero
by tyrannusBE
Summary: Three operatives from opposing factions each seek to find the cause of the outbreak of the filth in a sleepy little town. But to get to what lies beneath ground zero, they may need to work together. Can Templar, Illuminati and Dragon put aside their differences to stand up to the growing hunger of the filth?
1. Introduction

"Who are you, sitting here like you own the place?" There was spite in the man's voice. Spite and jealousy. Men were always jealous of their betters.

"I'm Peter." The answer was simple, as straightforward as Peter could manage, but it enraged him anyway. Peter didn't mind. It was the way of things. The way he leaned back on the two back legs of the chair, his own draped over the coffee table in the middle of the lounge, probably didn't help with his demeanor. But then, he had always had a penchant for seeing how far he could drive people before they snapped. People, and other things as well.

Peter was a stocky young man, his dark brown hair combed up into a high ridge that looked like a half-successful attempt to defy gravity. His goatee was carefully groomed when he could afford it to be, his hazel eyes always searching for some kind of deeper meaning. He wore khaki cargo pants, sneakers, a flanel shirt. And the red and black leather jacket that marked him for a Templar. Not that this man knew what that meant.

In the end, curiosity won it from anger. It always did. _People are predictable things_, Peter knew. "What're you doing here?" _Always the same questions. _

"Right now I'm sitting in your chair, I think", Peter said dryly. "I can see that." The proprietor's hand tightened around his axe. A drop of blood dripped onto his nice wooden floor. Blood that had not caked to the head. Fresh blood. _Not human blood, _Peter hoped. The blood looked blacker than normal. Murkier. That was reassuring. The rifle sitting beside Peter should be enough to serve as a quiet answer to that either way.

He gave up that line of inquiry and went with another. Another of the same. "How did you get in?" "Back door. Don't worry, I've resealed it", Peter was quick to assure this man, who had gone through such pains to secure his home. That earned him another scornful look. _The things we do to please others. Might as well not have bothered. _

Still, perhaps the game had run its course now. "Look, if you must know-" Peter paused, but the other was clearly not a great conversationalist, and gave no assent or denial. "I've been sent here. There's something going on here." That drew a disdainful snort. "D'ya think?"

Peter didn't let off. "You're Andrew Griffith." "How do you know that?" "Your name is on the mailbox." _And I've seen your photograph. Blond, lazy eyes, you're even wearing the same shirt. _"Can I call you Andy?"Andrew Griffith had been marked as a person of interest when the assignment came down. Or rather, his house had been marked as ground zero. _Best not tell him that. _

"Yours is the only safe place I could find. You got an extra bedroom?" "Bedroom, yes. Food. No." He had just pushed a whole shopping cart full of nonperishables up his porch, but the point was fair enough. "My... My son. You can have my son's room." And there it was. The regret. The fear. Fear always won it from curiosity. _People are predictable things._

"My father, have you seen my father? I need eggs, eggs and tomatoes and biscuits for the dog. But it hurts, eggs won't help, they won't, they won't. The doctor could help. But the doctor's a bit unstable and I could-" The babbling didn't stop until Florentine channeled a strike down through the carved moonstone in her hand, and even then it turned into a high pitched scream.

That drew the attention of more, and the incessant talk was multiplied manifold. Another child, an old couple, a taxi driver, all of them with their heads blossoming into a grotesquery of moving, writhing, seething oilspills. Florentine knew it wasn't what it looked like. It wasn't oil. She only knew it as 'the filth'.

Florentine had straight red hair that framed her face and went down to the bottom of her neck. It made her eyes look greenish in the mirror, so people always mistook her for an Irishwoman, but they were truly grey, and as far as she had managed to trace her family, she was not Irish. She wore a simple pair of jeans, trainers, a jacket over a dark blue tank top. Most of her life, she had taken to wearing red. The Illuminati didn't like red in clothing. Once, the same people might have said she looked delicate, but she had toughened up since then. Physically, if not quite as well mentally.

"Not human. They're not human", she had to keep telling herself as she sent up spike after spike of high volatile energies. It looked like blue sparks, but that wasn't what it looked like either. Nothing was anymore. _Anima_, some called it. _Elemantalism_, said others. _Magic_, others still. Quieter than the handgun at her hip. Less painful too, she told herself. She told herself a lot of things.

There were more of them here, these infected people. But, telling herself she was not hurting them and they were not human, she cut them down one by one. _No, not people. _

The Illuminati had given her an address and a name. Andrew Griffith. They called it 'ground zero' of the 'disease'. _Assess. Investigate. Contain. _It sounded so much like what the Orochi group would do.

And yet Florentine bobbed her head, said 'yes', and went. She didn't know what it was. It had started as gratitude. Then it became servitude.

Now she was a cog in a system, and she had never not turned when it was required of her. _Turn, little cog. _

So Florentine turned to the house. Just like she was told.

The top of the cliff wasn't a safe place to be. But then, neither was anywhere else. Joseph looked down at the sleepy little town and smirked. He would not be the only one there, he expected. If the Dragon sent you, you could be sure the others would take an interest as well. The Illuminati, the Templars, Orochi, Phoenicians, you name it. They'd be there. They would always be there.

Joe was on the short side, which still made him taller than most of the Dragon's Asian agents. He blended in with them well, with his short black hair and his dark brown eyes. Hiking boots, black jeans and a striped shirt made him into another face in the crowd, when he wanted to be. His perpetual eerie smirk did not.

"Taking a tumble? A walk, a stroll, a fall. I'll go with you, I'll-" Joe could've been taken by surprise if they didn't always talk. But then he'd counted on that, or he wouldn't let his guard down. In a flash, Joe brought around his shotgun, channeled the essence of his soul into all the pellets of the slug, and pulled the trigger. The filth gurgled, toppled, took a tumble off the cliff.

The dry, loud crack of thunder belied the magic in the shot, but it was there. It had become routine to Joe to make the spells like he'd been taught. They were little more than tricks to him now. And yet without them, he knew, he would be lost.

Him and so many others like him.


	2. Security

The light bulb flickered briefly, dangling on the end of its electrical wire from the basement ceiling. Then the light fizzed and died. Peter made a face, looking down from the top of the stairs. Beside him, Andrew Griffith fidgeted nervously.

Black tendrils had snaked their way up the staircase, along steps and walls and low ceiling. Black slick muck, bubbling pockets blooming where the larger strands crossed. They had almost reached the doorway at ground level, and were nearly invisible in the dark but for the sheen of the thin film of grease that covered everything. _Ground zero indeed_, Peter thought. Getting down there would be difficult.

"You're sure you want to go", Griffith repeated the words for the umpteenth time, incredulous as when he'd said it first. "I have to see", Peter declared. The flashlight Griffith had offered him would have to suffice. That in one hand and his handgun in the other, Peter gingerly made his first step down. "Close the door", he said. There was no answer but for the creak of rusted hinges and the clack of a lock shutting.

Slowly, carefully, Peter made his way down. He was careful to place his foot on bare spots, where he could still see the wood of the stairs between the sea of black. Far more often than he would like, Peter's shoes brushed against the outcrops of filth. As he progressed, there were less and less safe places, and Peter had to resort to feeling for the spots that seemed least infected.

Most of it felt like a thick slush of muck and gruel, giving way to his feet with squelches, but here and there it was solid, or liquid as clear water though it kept a grasping form. Before long, it clung to his shoes, and crept inside to cover his socks. At one point, a bubble burst while he stepped around it, and spattered over his trouser legs.

The flashlight bounced, bobbed and searched in Peter's hand. Eventually, it found the center of the basement, as Peter found the bottom step of the stairs. The grasping black strands came up through a hole in the floor, he saw. It must have been a crack first, small and inconsequential. But as the filth came pouring through, it opened up to its relentless assault, like water breaking through a tiny prick in a ship's hull and tearing it open.

The guardian's iridescent white eyes stared at him from the far end of the room. It shrieked at him, and Peter heard the thump before he saw what made it. Its slick dark arm stretched and whipped clear across the basement, crashing into the wall behind Peter. The wall buckled, the arm burst apart before reforming and pulling back, and a droplet of the filth landed in Peter's neck, slowly sliding down beneath his clothes.

The Templar shivered as he felt the foul cling between his shoulderblades, felt it bite and gnaw at his skin. Slowly, reluctantly, he turned the flashlight on his attacker's eyes. The thing no longer had any humanity left in it. Its vaguely humanoid form was all covered in blackness, writhing protrusions wriggling from what had been arms and chest. Its babbling was no longer in any human tongue, but a series of grunts, hisses and shrieks. The only thing not black about it was the yellow fluorescent jacket it still wore, torn at the seams. It read _security_ on the chest. Peter would have thought it easy progress, if the thing wasn't barreling down on him.

Peter wasted no time in retreating up the staircase, vaulting two or three steps at a time. Behind him, the thing lurched at the spot he'd only just vacated, crashed into the wall and momentarily flattened against it before bouncing back into form and letting out a long, curdling howl.

Peter didn't have time to stop, nor was he particular about where he put his feet any longer, but the filth around him was intent on slowing him down and pointing out what a bad idea this had been. The dormant filth had awoken, and all along the staircase there were strands grasping at his legs, his arms, his hair.

Ahead, the strands of black muck had grasped on the chance to tear down the basement door and slowly slide into the house. Andrew griffith stood gaping at it, clutching his axe when Peter burst from the doorway, covered in gobs of filth that itched and pestered and nibbled at his flesh. "That won't help you", Peter warned, discarding the flashlight and snatching up his rifle as he thundered past Griffith and made for the door. "We have to go." "I have nowhere else to go", Griffith complained, but he came anyway.

On the porch, Peter skid to a halt, faced with a red haired woman and the barrel of a handgun. "Templar", she snarled. "No time!" Peter wailed, and broke back into motion. "Run!" Griffith followed, axe in hand, and nearly barrelled the Illuminati off her feet.

Three blocks later, they stopped in an alleyway. The woman came after them, and immediately she raised her gun again. Peter only sighed.

"That thing... We gotta keep moving", Griffith insisted. "It's there to guard the well in your basement. It wouldn't have come far beyond the door", Peter said, shaking his head. "Andrew Griffith", the Illuminati cut in. "Why's everybody know who I am?" the man seemed near desperation.

The woman took her eyes off Peter for a moment, and that was all he needed. Now there were two of them, each with a handgun pointed at the other's head. "Mine's bigger", Peter announced as he pulled back on the gun's hammer. "Men", the Illuminati grunted.

Peter grinned. "Doesn't have to be this way. Cross and pyramid tearing at each other's throats with tooth and nail. That's all fine out there, but we have bigger problems here. I'm Peter." Neither of them lowered their arms for half an inch, though. "Florentine", the Illuminati said after some hesitation.

It was all too much for Andrew Griffith. He didn't understand these people, with their words and their magic guns. As he watched these two, something bubbled beneath his skin. Black and hungry, there was fear and jealousy and desperation, but mostly there was the itch.

Something cracked, and suddenly Andrew's shoulder was awash in filth, bursting from his skin and washing over him, conquering flesh and consciousness in a flash. "Mister", he said. "Are you my mommy? Have you seen my mommy?"

Peter and Florentine both turned at the same time, weapons turning on the unfortunate Andrew Griffith. A shotgun blast to the man's back burst him apart before they could react, and Griffith burst apart in a wash of slime and muck.

Joseph leveled his shotgun at the Templar and the Illuminati. They were standing standing side by side, both of their guns aimed squarely at him.

"Well", Joe said. "This is new."


	3. Pooling Resources

"Here's a crazy thought. What if we all put our guns down?" Peter's handgun didn't lower an inch from the Dragon operative's face.

Florentine turned hers on the Templar. "Then all our guns would be down."

"You'd like that, wouldn't you? So you can do your talking. What you're supposed to be good at, Illuminati." Joseph had been in this line of work for too long to reason with Illuminati.

"I have a name", Florentine huffed. "Let's start with names. I'm Florence."

"I know how names work with the Illuminati. I bet you're called Florence Nightingale. But you're not. Popular culture. A healer. Positive vibes," Peter didn't buy it. "Florentine, then", the Illuminati offered. Joe didn't buy that either. "You're not from Florence. Too pale."

"Florentine works," Peter shrugged. "I'm Peter. Really. Peter Vandenbergh." He might write off the Illuminati's use of false names as paranoia, but perhaps the Templars were naïve to let their operatives use real names. Either way, neither of these two would be able to pronounce his name correctly, and there were still callsigns as well. "They call me Flemmish."

Joe knew the name. "Flemmish. I've heard that a few times. You're a known man, Peter." Peter shrugged. "Not me. The name rotates a bit to keep you guys on your toes. You know how it is." He gestured at Florentine. She grinned. "He's actually just from Flanders", she assured Joe. "The Real Flemmish is actually Ukrainian. Funny how that goes."

The Dragon glanced from Templar to Illuminati and back again. "Very well. I'm Joseph. Joseph Pine." "Shovelly Joe", Florentine said. Joseph scowled. "Unfortunately so. Your people are responsible for that." "Want to clue me in here?" Peter prompted. "We uncovered the identity of a Dragon bigshot", Florentine explained. "Joseph Pine had murdered two people with a shovel. We put a subliminal reference to him in a popular sitcom as a warning to back off."

Now Joseph had to laugh. "Bigshot. Yeah right", he sniggered. "I haven't made it far, and thanks to my name being broadcast on worldwide television, I never will. You Illuminati with your Florence Nightingales and your Lincolns and your Livingstons. You Templars with your lions and your Holy this and Holy that. Even the Dragon has jaws and fangs and claws. Me, I'm forever named for a murder that wasn't mine. Those people had already been dead once, before my shovel got to them."

"So, Joe? Flor?" Peter tried again. "Yeah, yeah", Florentine consented. Joe hesitantly followed suit. It was that, or potentially turn them two against one. "But if we do this, we pool our resources. Looking at you, little Nightingale." Florentine nodded. She had no taste for killing other people. If she had to give up a few small Illuminati secrets, so be it. "After this if over, we walk away. No more gunplay", she said. "Goes double for you, Templar." "Hey, you pulled on me first", Peter pointed out. "I'm more worried about Joe here pressing a few buttons to see what happens." "Plenty of buttons have been pressed already", Joe assured him.

"Are we going to bicker again, or are we going to do this?" Florentine prompted. "Any ideas?" "There was a guardian of sorts at ground zero", Peter said. "The growth comes from somewhere underground, and this thing was wearing a security jacket. We're looking for an underground facility." "Shouldn't be too hard to find. I can get schematics for the entire town and any underground levels," Florentine said.

Joe cocked his shotgun and pulled back on the pump, producing a foreboding _click-click_ sound. "Let's do this." Peter turned back in confusion. "Did you just throw away a perfectly good shell?" "I was making a statement."


	4. The Bodies

The stairway down was dank and covered in muck. It was so thick that at first, they all thought it was the filth. As it turned out, some of the dirt in this world was still just dirt, blessedly. They had all seen enough to believe otherwise. The doors and wooden panels they had been hammered shut with had been forced ages ago. Since then, squatters had taken over. Peter could see traces of living everywhere. A discarded radio, a moldy mattress on a platform along the staircase, empty wrappers of candybars, bottles, noodle cups, syringes. But no sign of the squatters themselves.

But Peter, Florentine and Joe had bigger worries on their minds than the portents of some slime on a staircase. What lay beyond it all the more. "This used to be a subway station", Florentine explained as she lead on, tracing an Illuminati map on her tablet. "Fascinating", Peter's tone of voice left little doubt as to his meaning. "You can go ahead and get lost then", Flor returned just as snidely.

"Look at this poor bastard", Joe interrupted the bickering of the two. He had gone ahead a few steps and prodded a dead man with the barrel of his shotgun. The body sat with its back against the stone wall of the underground staircase, eyes wide in frozen terror, a blossom of oily black erupting from his mouth. Joe turned the cone of his flashlight further down, tracing the steps to where another men lay sprawled over the staircase, arms stretched to reach the exit far above. Around his legs coiled black tendrils, tracing up to curl around his midriff and then burrow into his chest. "Weird", Peter muttered. "Filth don't usually kill people like that." "No", Flor agreed. "It takes them over. Wants to own them. This is different." She didn't want to admit it, but it scared the living daylights out of her.

They continued down, following Joe's flashlight and Flor's map. Peter was well bothered by the fact he could contribute neither, after having left Griffith's flashlight behind. He had tried to go back for it, but the first step into the Griffith homestead has sent its guardian roaring after him again. It was only by virtue of it minding its spot and going back to it that Peter got away a second time. "At Griffith's place, that guardian", he observed. "It keeps to its spot. Filth don't usually do that neither." "D'you think it's being controlled?" Joe suggested. "Nah. Impossible", Flor objected. "That's all filth is. Wild. Uncontrollable." "But look at them", Joe insisted, pointing his flashlight to another body. He stopped.

"Filth didn't kill this one", Peter said. It was true, there was no filth showing on this unfortunate's body. Florentine handed her tablet to Peter and knelt over the body, craning its head back and tearing open the tattered t-shirt the victim had worn. "Cold, been dead for days at least. By decay I'd say weeks", she said. "How many?" Peter asked, standing over her. "Three. Maybe four", she said. "First sightings of the filth were just under three weeks ago", Joe pointed out. "He's got traces of blunt force trauma", Flor went on with her impromptu autopsy. "Took a tumble down the stairs, broke his neck?" Peter suggested. "And still show it after three weeks? Nah", Flor shook her head. "This is what killed him." She turned his head sideways. It showed a gaping mess of blood and bits of skull. "Bullet?" Joe asked rhetorically. Flor nodded. "He took a beating, and then he was executed."

At the bottom of the stairs they found more bodies. Some had been swarmed by filth, more had been beaten, stabbed or shot to death. Often it was a combination of those three. "Slaughtered like dogs", Flor shivered. "Who would do this?" "We would", Peter said, but his voice was quiet, almost reverent for the dead. "Templars would. Illuminati. Dragon. If the secrets were big enough." A large number of the bodies had been piled around a news kiosk of rotting wood that faced the stairway. On it was a symbol sprayed in grafitti. A red square, a blue triangle, a green circle and a purple diamond, all intersecting over each other. "That looks like a big secret to me", Joe said. "The red square is Templar. Blue triangle for Illuminati. Green circle of the Dragon." "And the diamond?" Flor asked. "Phoenicians", Peter said. "But what is this doing here? Is this something these people made? Were they killed for it?" Flor ground her teeth, hands shaking as she clenched them into fists. "We find them", she said. "We find them and we make them say why before we kill them." "Whatever you say", Joe said. Peter didn't think it was a bad idea at all.


End file.
